Top Boy - FORMAT
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Synopsis
A powerful and thrilling primetime drama where youngsters will risk everything to be top boy.

Thrilling, raw, frightening, sad, hopeful and surprisingly funny by turn. Top Boy is an honest and gripping rendition of inner-city urban drug and gang culture.



Set on a housing estate, lives are lived along the lines where challenges come in all forms - especially for kids.Thirteen-year-old Ra'Nell finds he has to grow up fast when his mentally ill mother Lisa is suddenly hospitalised. At the same time, his mum's friend Heather, pregnant and penniless, enlists his help in a dangerous plan she has concocted to give her baby the chances she never head - 'even if it means doing one wrong thing to get to the right place.'



Meanwhile, in the courtyards of Summerhouse Estate a thriving but invisible business is being run by Dushane and his friend Sully. Charming, sexy and clever, the 26-year-old Dushane has “already run out of things to be – except this”. When he attracts the attention of ex-convict and drug dealer Bobby Raikes he seizes an opportunity to be more, to have more, to be Top Boy.



The second season of Top Boy begins a year after the end of the first and returns to follow Dushane and Sully, once partners and now rivals they are both looking to expand their territories but with this comes another breed of rival criminals. Ra'Nell on the other hand has found solace away form the gang life but his best friend Gem hasn't been quite so lucky.



With this new breed of criminal threatening the Summerhouse estate and with the options to go legit who will come out on top?



STARRING: ASHLEY WALTERS (FAMILY TREE, DOCTOR WHO, INSIDE MEN, OUTCASTS, SINBAD), KANE ROBINSON (R&B ARTIST/RAPPER – KANO, TOWER BLOCK)

DIRECTORS: S1 – YANN DEMANGE (CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DEAD SET), S2 – JONATHAN VAN TULLEKEN (MISFITS)

WRITER: RONAN BENNETT (MICHAEL MANN’S PUBLIC ENEMIES, THE HAMBURG CELL)

PRODUCERS: CHARLES STEEL, ALASDAIR FLIND, RONAN BENNETT

Duration
8 x 60'
Definition
SD
Genre
Formats
Subgenre
Drama
Producer
Cowboy Films
Production Year
2013
Awards

Winner - Drama Serial Category - RTS Programme Awards 2011


Winner - Audience Choice - Series Mania TV Festival 2012


Winner - BAFTA Television Craft Awards 2012 - Original Music - Brian Eno


Nominated - BAFTA Television Craft Awards 2012
- Director: Fiction - Yann Demange
- Photography & Lighting: Fiction - Tat Radcliffe


Nominated - Mini Series - BAFTA Television Award 2012


Nominated - TV Drama - South Bank Awards


Nominated - Drama One-off or Serial - Televisual Bulldog Awards 2012


Nominated - Music - Televisual Bulldog Awards 2012


Nominated - Cinematography - Televisual Bulldog Awards 2012


Winner - Best Drama Series/Serial - Broadcast Awards 2013

Press

"Top Boy feels like an ensemble piece, although it is Walters who tops the bill. It is Walters's compelling screen presence which lies at the heart of this multi-layered, ambitious piece of work". Telegraph 21.08.13
"...an involving and wonderfully well-acted piece of television, one that thrust you straight into a fully imagined world, forcing you to pay attention while making you almost queasily complicit in its characters' sins”.Independent 21.08.13
"...it’s as visually spectacular as American cable TV dramas such as The Wire or Mad Men — one early shot, of the mechanical diggers gathered round the gang lord’s grave at dawn, with the Thames and the Millennium Dome beyond them, was superbly cinematic”.Daily Mail 21.08.13
"...still serious, and seriously good”. Guardian 21.08.13

FOR A FULL PRESS COVERAGE REPORT PLEASE CLICK HERE: http://issuu.com/tpr-media/docs/coverage_reduced_deleted

Ratings

On the day of broadcast, Top Boy season 2, episode 1 was the number 1 tweeted TV show of the day. The title was trending on Twitter long before the broadcast commenced and achieved a total of 98,640 tweets with a peak of 3,894 tweets per minute. The premiere episode peaked with total ratings that saw a 15% increase on the lead-in series and a 23% increase on the figures achieved by the programme occupying the slot the previous week. It also proved extremely popular amongst the 16-24 age group, achieving a 78% increase on the benchmark share. While Top Boy season 2, episode 1 proved popular with male audiences, increasing on the benchmark share, the benchmark for female viewers was almost doubled.